5 Online Storage Services -- Which is Best for Keeping YOUR Data Safe?

Choose the right virtual warehouse for your data with our hands-on tests of five online back up services.

Stop us if you’ve heard this one: You should be backing up your Mac. OK, OK, you’ve heard that one before--we all have. But a huge number of Mac owners use notebooks, and backing up to an external drive isn’t always convenient. Online backup services let you back up to an off-site server (which romantics also call “the cloud”) over any Internet connection, meaning you can keep your files backed up over Wi-Fi, no wires required. Your data is encrypted for safety and stored in a secure location until you need to access it--or you stop paying your bill, whichever comes first.

Besides being incredibly convenient, some of these online data-backup services include other features, such as synchronizing and sharing files between two or more computers, accessing your files through a Web-based interface, displaying a gallery of your photos, backing up external hard drives, and so on. We’ll help you compare five Mac-friendly services, to find the right cloud for you and your precious bits and bytes.

Backblaze

Set-it-and-forget-it
Backblaze really wants to back up your entire hard drive, although you
can exclude anything you want. It automatically excludes applications,
disk images, the operating system, and temporary files, both according
to where they are located (nothing in the Applications or Library
folders, for example) and what their file extension is (no .log, .iso,
.exe, and others). You can’t include anything that Backblaze excludes
by default, but you can expand the list of exclusions. Backblaze will
never back up a file larger than 4000MB, but you can nudge that ceiling
down.

Backblaze lives in your System Preferences, with a
status/shortcut icon in the menubar. Its Settings window has a slider
where you can throttle the backup speed, request a reminder if you
haven’t backed up in a certain number of days, and view a log showing
everything scheduled for backup, plus a list of recent activity. To
restore, you log in online, where you can browse your backed-up files
and request a ZIP file to download (you get an email when it’s ready),
a DVD mailed to you (4.2GB max, and you’ll pay a whopping $99 for it,
including overnight FedEx), or get your files on a USB hard drive
(500GB max, $189, also including overnight FedEx). Four weeks worth of
changes are included, and you just “roll back” the date in a drop-down
menu to find older versions of files. Backblaze even dates the files in
the browser, which is a huge help.

Backblaze defaults to backing up all your files, but you can exclude certain folders or file extensions here.

Files
you delete from your Mac are deleted from Backblaze after 30 days. You
can back up external drives (except for Time Machine drives), but as
with Mozy,
be sure to reattach the drive within 30 days of removal, or Backblaze
will think you deleted the “missing” files and trash them from your
backup. You can’t back up network volumes, although it did offer to
back up our iDisk, since that appears on our Mac as a local volume and
then is synced periodically to MobileMe’s servers. (Which is why we,
naturally, declined to back up iDisk.)

Your data is kept safe on
Backblaze by 128-bit AES encryption throughout its encoding, transfer,
and storage, in a secure storage facility with biometric security, a
raised floor on seismic pedestals, and other cool-sounding stuff. In
the Settings you can opt to add a personal encryption key, but
Backblaze doesn’t have a copy, so you can’t ever lose it, or no one
will be able to recover your data.

After you choose a set of files to restore, Backblaze prepares a ZIP archive and emails you a link when it's ready to download.

We
liked Backblaze’s thoroughness and the ability to restore our backed-up
files to any computer. If you only want to back up a few folders, the
interface is a little trickier than Carbonite’s (see facing page),
since you need to exclude folders from the default set. Carbonite lets
you start with an empty backup set and then add folders. And Backblaze
won’t let you totally exclude your main Macintosh HD volume, so if you
only want to back up your external drive and not your main one, you’re
out of luck.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Backblaze is affordable, attractive, and reliable. We especially
appreciated its thorough documentation, down to a list of every file
and process it puts on your machine and why.

Comments

Dropbox allows you to share files between your computers and phone with ease, as well as to share files with friends by giving them a download link. to start with an extra 250MB of free storage use a referral link to sign up. if anyone needs one use this: http://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTExMjAzMDUwOQ

Mozy and Carbonite both seem to be very reasonable options based on service quality, available space for back-up and price. For the nominal user, Mozy even offers up to 2GB free according to an article I found comparing both backup services. You can read the comparison at http://factoidz.com/online-backup-services-my-comparison-of-carbonite-vs-mozy-backup/

www.DriveHQ.com cloud service is also available on Mac. In fact, DriveHQ offers online storage, online backup, online sharing and collaboration, FTP Server hosting, email server hosting, web server hosting and WebDAV drive mapping services. Most of features are available on Mac, except DriveHQ FileManager; you can still use any FTP Client software, such as FileZilla (http://www.drivehq.com/ftp/ click on software tab) to access DriveHQ cloud storage. On Mac, WebDAV drive mapping is also supported. For more info, please visit:
http://www.drivehq.com/mapdrive/

Although DriveHQ does not have a Mac client it is still very useable.See http://www.DriveHQ.com.
See also my website for more lists and links on the subject of online backup.(http://www.online-data-backup-info.com)

benet

I have online account with backupandshare.com.It is the easiest and user friendly service I have seen so far but with almost everything you need as an online backup application. They are also providing Windows mobile backup solution free for their users. So far very good experience, no wonder they are the current topper in http://top10onlinebackup.com

I tried Mozy based on this review. I had trouble from the start - backups not going to their server, file retrieval failed. It never seemed to work properly. And when I contacted support, I was ignored. No response to my e-mails, no one answers their phone (kept getting voice mail). AVOID THEM. I'm trying Backblaze, hope they do a better job.

The summary chart at the end of the article shortchanges Dropbox on a few points: (1) Dropbox does keep deleted files. Till recently it kept them forever, but now free accounts only keep deleted files 30 days, while paid accounts keep them forever. (2) It does have a speed throttle; go to Dropbox menubar icon -> Preferences -> Network. I've heard the "Automatic" setting is 70% of your upload speed.

Just wanted to say I LOVE dropbox. I've been using it for a few months now. It's nice to be able to host a file somewhere easy when I need it. I also like using the "copy public link" option to send people download links for large files.If anyone need a referral link so you start with an extra 250 megs of space here it is:https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTI4NDc0MzY5

EVERYONE seems to love Carbonite. Am I wrong to think that I want to be able to control my backups, and be able to schedule them when I want them to run? Carbonite for Windows allows scheduling - but not for Mac.